Report: The Pentagon plans to increase its use of cloud computing in security push

The Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense. (DoD Photo)

After his recent trip to the West Coast to check out how cloud tech companies are fending off cybersecurity attacks, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis plans to increase the use of cloud computing at Department of Defense, according to a report.

Bloomberg Government reported Wednesday that the DoD has decided that developing and maintaining cutting-edge technology infrastructure is as important to the defense of the U.S. as any fancy weapons systems. The move follows a visit by Mattis to Amazon’s headquarters in August as part of a tour of technology companies and military installations where they discussed ways to “further expand initiatives designed to accelerate fielding capabilities to the warfighter,” the Pentagon said at the time.

Because nothing says government-in-action like a committee, the DoD is forming a committee called the Cloud Executive Steering Group to evaluate potential cloud computing services and help implement the best options within the sprawling bureaucracy needed to support the 1.3 million soldiers and 742,000 civilian employees who work for the agency. The idea is “to promote risk-taking, provide the latest technologies to warfighters, and accelerate IT procurement and development,” according to Bloomberg.

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Tom Krazit, GeekWire's Cloud & Enterprise Editor, covered technology for news organizations including IDG, CNET, and paidContent before serving as executive editor of Gigaom and the Structure conference series. Reach him at tom@geekwire.com and follow him @tomkrazit.

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